Author: simon
Jazz Office/Bestival Booking Refund UPDATE
Monday, 5th March, 2007 at 3:20 pm, Isle of Wight
JonnyBestival called today because he wants Ventnor to realise that the Jazz Office charging the booking fee for Islander tickets on Friday was down to a mistake on his part.
Here’s how the confusion probably arose - All of the ticket outlets over the Island still get paid a booking fee for selling the Islander tickets (covering their overheads, staff costs, rent, etc), but Bestival covered the £5 booking charge for all of the 2,700 tickets that were sold - what jolly lovely types they are!
In the whirl that has been the last three/four days for him - he forgot to let the Jazz office know that Bestival would cover the booking fee (didn’t attach the document in his email).
Easy to forgive when you think that Bestival’s a small setup/he’s been working 60 hours over the last three days/demand for tickets has been unprecedented/their Web servers melted over the weekend due to such interest.
If you did get charged the booking fee when buying your Islander tickets, the Jazz office has a pile of fivers waiting to refund to you - even if you bought it on a credit card.
So that’s that settled.
(It will be fivers they hand out - not the dollars in the picture, just couldn’t find a picture of a pile of fivers!)
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March 5th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I wish I worked in a jazz office, they sound groovy
March 5th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Thanks to John Hughes and Ben for their support and nice comments today. Ben - we are groovy!!
Occasionally mistakes happen in small organisations and we too at the jazz festival office work all hours with a small team to make big things happen and to support some of the things that are good about the Island. For our part, alongside John at the Bestival office, we apologise for any confusion that has now been explained via the Blog. The Bestival and the Jazz Festival are both great festivals and we have an excellent rapport between the two teams and we both know how much time and cost there is involved in putting such great events on. There are “jolly good folk” on both sides of this situation, as it happens Sal.
Next time, as a courtsy to a fellow hard working Ventnor resident it would be nice if you check with me personally what the situation is before being openly insulting about “the jazz office”. I did, after all, work in tandem on the Jazz Festival and constant sales of Bestival tickets for 16 hours on Friday, tired but still smiling and thought I was benefiting a local population by offering a ticket sales service on the own doorstep that people would otherwise have to travel to Ryde or sit on the internet for hours for to get.
Support it or lose it was a Blog phrase, was it not, when talking about the survival of small businesses in Ventnor shopping streets? ….. I haven’t seen one nice word said by you about us recently and that is most disheartening.
By the way - we do read the Blog! If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have known about you offering everyone money back from our office without us even knowing there was a problem in the first place.
Geri
March 5th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Geri,
Do the good people at the blog have to post nice things about you?? I am sure that free speech is still in force in this country.. to my knowledge anyway. And it has to be said there may be justification in you getting the short shrift as you seem to have fingers in lots of pies stirring up the fillings! Excuse the mixed metaphors. I know as a resident of Ventnor that not everyone thinks you are the giving souls that you like to portray yourselves as. Sticking your oar in at the Winter Gardens and raking it in from the town over the Jazz festival weekend. I know from speaking to people in the tent at Salisbury Gardens how much you charged last year and this year it’s even more… not getting enough from the hard working artists community?? Oh well there’s always another day, another dollar.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Firstly Geri, I am really surprised at your reaction.
I believe that what you do, Geri, with the Jazz Festival is brilliant, especially for Ventnor. I’ve seen how hard you work, which is why we supported you. You’ll also have seen that we wrote rave reviews last year - to the extent of missing some of the jazz events to go home on Saturday afternoon especially to put a post up to drum up business for the artists marquee.
We’ve put up loads of promo pieces for your jazz nights in Ventnor, but, for the record, haven’t received a single word of thanks from you. It’s not what we’re looking for, but since you’ve brought the subject up ….
If you look back at the postings on the forum, it was one of the forum members, Wireworm who posted the piece on the forum highlighting that you were charging a booking fee, not us. The rest of the forum members left their thoughts from there.
And it was also not my responsibility to call you to find out what was going on.
Jonny was on to it straight away and HE was the one who asked us to put a piece on the blog asap stating that you’d be giving back the fivers on Monday - so if you have any bones to pick, do it with him. Not us!
I have re-read the post and cannot see one thing that you could possibly say is insulting.
Finally, just because Simon (not me, actually) said that Bestival people were ‘jolly good folk’ doesn’t infer that we have said you are not .. but given the way that you’ve reacted, I’m beginning to wonder.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
“… thought I was benefiting a local population by offering a ticket sales service.” It was great that people could get tickets in Ventnor, but it’s not right of you to make out you were doing it for the betterment of mankind, you got £5 for each ticket you sold.
“I haven’t seen one nice word said by you about us recently and that is most disheartening.” Here’s an idea of how little we’ve written about your ventures -
There’s plenty more too.
As far as us rushing around to contact you to find your side of the story, you might be making money out of your business (and good luck to you), but the Blog is run on a voluntary basis. It’s not up to us to chase up everything that appears on the Forum to find out every angle of what’s put up there.
As is the case with all postings on the public forums, if you see something you don’t think is right, get on there and post a comment to clarify it.
We too were surprised at the reaction to wireworm’s posting, but there’s nothing we can do to stop people expressing their opinion. You can’t hold us responsible if you’ve people’s backs up.
“16 hours on Friday” - I think if you’re writing comments like your one above, it looks like your working too many hours, as you appear to have lost your better judgement.
Here’s a hint. Deciding to personally attack the person who does the majority of the writing on the site, is not the best way to try and get support for your ventures.
What a shame.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Clearly working too hard and becoming oversenstive with it. Apologies to Sal and Simon.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Let’s draw a line under this now …
March 6th, 2007 at 12:59 am
hi all
my the passions flying high down there, must be all that sea air eh?
this was a v simple mistake by myself and seems to have set off a sensitivo out break all round!!
anyway, glad we are all friends now, and good to see that open debate is going on.
nice one the blog and the jazz office x
March 6th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I wonder if anyone could tell me how the jazz shop intends to refund the people who were overcharged for their tickets and are unaware that they are owed money? The jazz shop made a list of names and addresses of earlybird ticket purchasers to confirm their I.O.W. status, presumably these people will be contacted somehow and their money returned, otherwise the jazz shop will still be in pocket.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Why don’t we just all chill and smoke some pot whilst listening to trad jazz and browsing ventnor blog in tandem baby
April 19th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I didn’t think that it was very well attended either. I also asked about the Folk and Blues Festival planned and, quite honestly, cannot find one decent blues act in the line up so far. And if they have not been booked by now, they won’t be coming. Again quite honestly, if Fairport Convention is the best they can come up with, they will struggle to sell tickets. At £90 a throw for F.C., Salsa Celtica? and Guy Davis?, it doesn’t stack up too well against the £105 for all the acts at the IOW Festival.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
February 18th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
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